In general, a wire harness is an electric wiring system containing a number of cables, often as many as 400-500 circuits. When producing such large scale wire harnesses, a plurality of unit cable binding assemblies (called temporary binding circuits) is first manufactured. These are then electrically connected by various means by what is called a final binding process.
The temporary binding circuit contains last-in terminals for various design reasons. The last-in terminals are terminals which are fastened to the ends of a plurality of cables comprising the wire harness and are mounted onto a connector at the final binding of the temporary binding circuits or when connecting the wire harness to a desired device (the last-in process). In other words, this last-in terminal is left exposed on the end of the cable until the last-in process is carried out.
The existence of the last-in terminal creates various problems in manufacturing wire harnesses; e.g. its susceptability to deformation during transport. Obviously, if the terminal is deformed, mounting on a connector becomes difficult, continuity of the cable may be compromised, etc. Similarly, there is a tendency of cable components fastened to the last-in terminal to become entangled with other cable components, thus making handling difficult.
Also, the last-in process is labor intensive; i.e. there are many cases wherein a plurality of last-in terminals is connected to a common connector. In such cases, cables connected to the last-in terminal which had been previously inserted prevented the last-in terminals of succeeding temporary binding circuits from being inserted.